Excuse me but WOW was the first MMO to use what you refer to as quest hubs with tons of quests and quest based levelling/ THis is a FACT. Please don't give previous MMO as examples as they all had like a 100 quests tops and focused on mob farming.
In the name of MMoRPG history I must dispute this "fact", in reality DAoC was the first to come out with the quest hub idea in 2001, DAoC IMO was the first true theme park, EQ prior to Luclin was not a theme park.
EQ was a themepark. You had a guided set of mob camps you had to farm. Not much different to quest hubs.
DAoC, could you solely level on quests? Was the leveling quest focused?
DAOC was closer to EQ than WOW, only with better PVP than both.
You could not level on quests, as I understand it AC2 is generally considered the first true quest hub game, which Blizzard modeled their design from.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
WoW is still better in some aspects other than graphic & gameplay. WoW has the real mmo world, where you can immerse yourself in. It has a very deep lore to support it. Oh, and it also has better animation compared to most newer mmorpgs. Why can't the devs see that, is beyond me.
Originally posted by inemosz WoW is still better in some aspects other than graphic & gameplay. WoW has the real mmo world, where you can immerse yourself in. It has a very deep lore to support it. Oh, and it also has better animation compared to most newer mmorpgs. Why can't the devs see that, is beyond me.
Because you don't need a real mmo world to make money? LoL and WoT are good examples. Heck, even Blizz is no longer focusing on a classical MMO like WoW. The two new games they are pushing are a MOBA and a card game.
Originally posted by inemosz WoW is still better in some aspects other than graphic & gameplay. WoW has the real mmo world, where you can immerse yourself in. It has a very deep lore to support it. Oh, and it also has better animation compared to most newer mmorpgs. Why can't the devs see that, is beyond me.
Because you don't need a real mmo world to make money? LoL and WoT are good examples. Heck, even Blizz is no longer focusing on a classical MMO like WoW. The two new games they are pushing are a MOBA and a card game.
Actually, LoL and WoT are about the worst examples you could pick, if anything they reinforce why WoW is so much better, and if you seriously think that Blizzard are not focusing on WoW and the MMO genre as a whole then i really don't know what to tell you, except you are seriously misinformed. Blizzard are able to push into other areas simply because their MMO is making enough profit to enable them to do so, they have budgets and Development teams other companies can only dream about, and you can be very very sure that they are not underemployed!
Warcraft marketing is second to none. I saw an ad the other day that said "100 MILLION PEOPLE" then in small letters "have played", or something to that extent. It is pure brilliant marketing. The South Park episode put them on the map (another brilliant marketing move). They now have people that have invested YEARS in the game and don't want to feel like it was all for nothing, so they stay. Not only do they stay, but they will viciously berate any decent game that comes out (out of a fear that it was all for nothing).
It was THE game to play in the late 2000's. Their brilliant marketing has kept it going longer, and bringing in more money, than most games could dream of. Blizzard definitely deserves a crown. You can't argue with their success.
WOW is King because the world is full of idiots with attention spans of Gnats and the IQ to match. I mean 10 years of repeating the same content over and over and over and over...
And now you can buy max level characters to bypass all the good stuff while levelling up so that you can jump right into the repetitive grind of end game.
Originally posted by inemosz WoW is still better in some aspects other than graphic & gameplay. WoW has the real mmo world, where you can immerse yourself in. It has a very deep lore to support it. Oh, and it also has better animation compared to most newer mmorpgs. Why can't the devs see that, is beyond me.
Because you don't need a real mmo world to make money? LoL and WoT are good examples. Heck, even Blizz is no longer focusing on a classical MMO like WoW. The two new games they are pushing are a MOBA and a card game.
Well, I was talking about the WoW clones. I thought this thread is talking about mmorpg.
I'll continue to play WoW until we get an MMO of comparable quality and polish that truly does something different, preferably breaking away from the whole concept of leveling up through level limited zones and endless gear grind and gear replacement.
Originally posted by inemosz WoW is still better in some aspects other than graphic & gameplay. WoW has the real mmo world, where you can immerse yourself in. It has a very deep lore to support it. Oh, and it also has better animation compared to most newer mmorpgs. Why can't the devs see that, is beyond me.
Because you don't need a real mmo world to make money? LoL and WoT are good examples. Heck, even Blizz is no longer focusing on a classical MMO like WoW. The two new games they are pushing are a MOBA and a card game.
Well, I was talking about the WoW clones. I thought this thread is talking about mmorpg.
nope ... i thought this thread is about king of the hill .. obviously the hill changes, and wow is no longer king.
As you all know, I have a love/hate relationship towards WoW.
However, I have played almost every MMORPG released since 1998, and was playing WoW at initial release.
After all these years, I can tell you that the major reason WoW is still the King of the Hill is due to the following.
Because WoW came out way before all of the existing MMOs except EQ1. Total bullshit lol.
This causes several things to happen:
1
2) The subscription for WoW becomes a plus for Blizzard....for not only is there a time investment, but a money investment for WoW players. For WoW Players are loathe to abandon the WoW investment of time and money for any MMO that does not blow them away. In teh end, the new MMO makes money off initial release, a month or 2 of sub time, and if F2P maybe some cash shop purchase profit, but in the end its not much. Also, the fact that if you decide to play WoW along with another MMO, that WoW sub hangs over your head...and if you do not play WoW enough during the same time you are trying out other MMOs, you kind of...feel guilty? Your money spent and not being used?
The above applied to many mmo long before WOW, EQ being just one of them.
3) The power of the WoW clone defeats all new MMO's to some degree. I call this the "Fonzie Factor"...Back in the mid 1970's a sitcom came out that broke the sitcom genre, it was called "Happy Days" and was loosely based on a great movie that had come out previously called 'American Graffiti". Well, there was a character named 'Fonzie" that started out as a cameo character and not a main character, i.e. did not appear in every episode. The combination of his flair andthe fact that he was not in every episode created fans to eagerly anticipate his next appearence. Unfortunately, as with everything on network TV, the producers recognizing Fonzies popularity made him a regular character, then increased the number of time he would appear in each episode, then increased the amount of time he was in each episode, then making entire episodes revolve around him, and eventually, the whole series revolved around him. By then, fans were "Fonzie Saturated" and the series failed. THIS, is what developers and producers of MMOs do every single time they release a new MMO...they clone WoW over and over again, to the point where we are WoW saturated...just like Fonzie. The BEST example of this is "Wild Star".....as despite even to myself as being new and unique...its still the same old same old WoW formula.
Wow wasn't the first modern themepark, EQ2 came out before WOW so it's EQ2 that other mmo's have cloned.
In conclusion, there really is no reason for the large WoW player base to leave WoW 100% for another MMO, or moreover even share WoW time with another MMO. As long as game studios continue to base their MMO designs on WoW to some degree or another, they just dig their own holes. Where is the imagination? Where is the creativity or ingenuity?
Again EQ2 came first.
I can easily see in some cases where great Devs come up with non WoW clones, only to have some high mucky mucky poo poo their ideas because "WoW is the mose successful MMO, they obviously are doing whats right, therefore we must do the same, and of course do it better, which will make players come to our game and make us king of the hill"....
NOT!!!!!!!!!!!
Please Devs and Prods...stop the madness!
The rest i can agree with, fact is it was EQ2 who bought us the the type of questing you saw in early WOW but because of WOW success people forget EQ2 came before WOW.
I agree with everything the OP said, including the Fonzie saturation of Happy Days (rofl but true). Great post.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon. In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
If mmo's had the kind of advertising and publicity that blizzard provided for WoW... Celebrities, Commercials and thousands of ads back in 1998.
We would be looking at a much more interesting genre
This logic has many assumptions that doesn't really hold water.
Chiefly that somehow 'wow clones' are popular because people don't know about 'non-wow-clones'.
What is this? pre-2000 where people don't have 'Google'?
BR5 from EVE Online made mainstream news and that is one recent example.
'Lack of awareness' excuse doesn't really make sense nowadays.
You clearly don't know what your talking about.
WoW brought in players in who didn't know the genre existed through advertising. How do you explain all those millions of players that thought WoW was the first mmo? Which mmo do you think the developers are going to try to clone, the mmo with 300k subs or the mmo with 14 million subs?
So Jpnz, How does BR5 making the news compare to commercials that ran everyday with Mr. T, Chuck Norris, Ozzy Osbourn and William Shatner? Granted WoW didn't start out with commercials like these but you don't get millions of players into the genre by NOT advertising.
I can not take someone seriously when they proceed to say that it came out before all mmo's with the exception of EQ 1, then they proceed to call everything after it a wow clone. The ignorance hurts my brain.
competitive and balanced. Wow? Lol I don't think so. dungeons you aoe through without evn caring about heals or dmg. Appart from heroic, every other form of raiding is a mess where players grossly over gear content, an issue that is a forex result if the lack of new content. And then there are BG where someone in top gear can simply stand still and do nothing with 800k or do of healing while he is dotted for 1k. Wow has good elements but it is one of the worst balanced games out there - a game do poorl balanced they need to simplify skill sets.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Some how I think if they were required by law to state actual sub numbers by state, you'd see that the king has been cooking it's books for a number of years. You've got no proof that they are the king other than some inflated numbers. If they are king, why all the server mergers? Why all the cross-realm crap? Why the LFG/LFD/LFR crap? You should be standing amongst 50 people at all times... and yet, you aren't are you? They aren't king of anything.
Originally posted by Foobarx Some how I think if they were required by law to state actual sub numbers by state, you'd see that the king has been cooking it's books for a number of years. You've got no proof that they are the king other than some inflated numbers. If they are king, why all the server mergers? Why all the cross-realm crap? Why the LFG/LFD/LFR crap? You should be standing amongst 50 people at all times... and yet, you aren't are you? They aren't king of anything.
Blizzard/Activision is a public traded company. Look at there Q1-4 financial report and see if you think they are cooking up their numbers and aren't king of the hill. Also, in Orgrimmar on the Arthas server I'm standing hundreds of people whenever I log on.
The easiest way to put it is that WoW can play on just about any computer that you can turn on. This allows the game to have a really high potential playerbase. Where other MMOs require you to have a super computer, this severely limits your potential playerbase. WoW does everything well, and has good controls and polish. If you press a button, there's no lag, and you're character doesn't look like he's some contortionist. Simply put, there's no reason to not play WoW. Other games that try to copy the WoW formula fall short, because "Why should I leave a game I've put 10 years of work into?"
Edit: You can make a hyper-realistic game, with a billion things going on all the time, but if it can only be played by 2 computers in the world, you're game will fail. People will try to play it on sub-par computers and it will play horribly. This is what happens to most modern MMOs. Unless you have something that beats the minimum requirements, not just meeting them, then you're probably not going to like the game. It will feel clunky and unpolished. There are some games I've played that are smooth, but many have called unpolished and clunky. Just like Windows 8, people complain about it's cpu and memory usage for an OS, but on my computer, I never run over 50% usage, with dual monitors, running 2 games, etc. The same goes for games.
Because WoW came out way before all of the existing MMOs except EQ1, many many players over the years have developed characters and in some cases several characters all the way from level 1 to level 90. There is a huge time investment. Thus, even though players like myself, who really wish a ground breaking MMO would come out, all the new MMO's always are in some way shape or form a WoW clone to one degree or another.
(...)
since this is your initial argument, let me correct you on that one.
Ultima Online, Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Neocron, Lineage 2, Eve Online, Ragnarok Online, all came out before WoW and are actually still running. so whatever WoW did, it was NOT because they were the first.
there is ONE valid answer to why WoW is (according to you) still king of the hill, they have one of the best engines. their engine runs smooth and INSTANT. there are nearly 0 mouse lags or whatnot in combat, the combat system actually wasn't too creative (since it was used before), but it -plain and simple- perfected that system.
and to comment on your last stament of that paragraph... what is a WoW clone? WoW itself is an everquest or DAoC or whatever clone, shouldn't we refer to the original of the cloning here?
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Comments
DAOC was closer to EQ than WOW, only with better PVP than both.
You could not level on quests, as I understand it AC2 is generally considered the first true quest hub game, which Blizzard modeled their design from.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Because you don't need a real mmo world to make money? LoL and WoT are good examples. Heck, even Blizz is no longer focusing on a classical MMO like WoW. The two new games they are pushing are a MOBA and a card game.
Actually, LoL and WoT are about the worst examples you could pick, if anything they reinforce why WoW is so much better, and if you seriously think that Blizzard are not focusing on WoW and the MMO genre as a whole then i really don't know what to tell you, except you are seriously misinformed. Blizzard are able to push into other areas simply because their MMO is making enough profit to enable them to do so, they have budgets and Development teams other companies can only dream about, and you can be very very sure that they are not underemployed!
Warcraft marketing is second to none. I saw an ad the other day that said "100 MILLION PEOPLE" then in small letters "have played", or something to that extent. It is pure brilliant marketing. The South Park episode put them on the map (another brilliant marketing move). They now have people that have invested YEARS in the game and don't want to feel like it was all for nothing, so they stay. Not only do they stay, but they will viciously berate any decent game that comes out (out of a fear that it was all for nothing).
It was THE game to play in the late 2000's. Their brilliant marketing has kept it going longer, and bringing in more money, than most games could dream of. Blizzard definitely deserves a crown. You can't argue with their success.
WOW is King because the world is full of idiots with attention spans of Gnats and the IQ to match. I mean 10 years of repeating the same content over and over and over and over...
And now you can buy max level characters to bypass all the good stuff while levelling up so that you can jump right into the repetitive grind of end game.
Too much facepalm!!!
Well, I was talking about the WoW clones. I thought this thread is talking about mmorpg.
I'm going to make a bold claim
If mmo's had the kind of advertising and publicity that blizzard provided for WoW... Celebrities, Commercials and thousands of ads back in 1998.
We would be looking at a much more interesting genre
This logic has many assumptions that doesn't really hold water.
Chiefly that somehow 'wow clones' are popular because people don't know about 'non-wow-clones'.
What is this? pre-2000 where people don't have 'Google'?
BR5 from EVE Online made mainstream news and that is one recent example.
'Lack of awareness' excuse doesn't really make sense nowadays.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
I'll continue to play WoW until we get an MMO of comparable quality and polish that truly does something different, preferably breaking away from the whole concept of leveling up through level limited zones and endless gear grind and gear replacement.
nope ... i thought this thread is about king of the hill .. obviously the hill changes, and wow is no longer king.
The rest i can agree with, fact is it was EQ2 who bought us the the type of questing you saw in early WOW but because of WOW success people forget EQ2 came before WOW.
I agree with everything the OP said, including the Fonzie saturation of Happy Days (rofl but true). Great post.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
You clearly don't know what your talking about.
WoW brought in players in who didn't know the genre existed through advertising. How do you explain all those millions of players that thought WoW was the first mmo? Which mmo do you think the developers are going to try to clone, the mmo with 300k subs or the mmo with 14 million subs?
So Jpnz, How does BR5 making the news compare to commercials that ran everyday with Mr. T, Chuck Norris, Ozzy Osbourn and William Shatner? Granted WoW didn't start out with commercials like these but you don't get millions of players into the genre by NOT advertising.
Reading comprehension goes a long way...
WoW is still the king because it is the best all around, a jack of all trades, it offers something for everyone.
The combat isn't unique, but it works and what combat system can you say has no issues. It's competitive and balanced.
Raids are well designed. As well are dungeons.
The art is very well done for a 2004 game.
Yes timing of release is a factor, but its not the only factor. And the best marketing WoW has is word of mouth.
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
Blizzard/Activision is a public traded company. Look at there Q1-4 financial report and see if you think they are cooking up their numbers and aren't king of the hill. Also, in Orgrimmar on the Arthas server I'm standing hundreds of people whenever I log on.
Err ... what ?
Why exactly would I give a rats behind about what MMO is "king of the hill" ?
To that I give a healthy: people, eat shit - because millions of flies cant possibly be wrong !!!
The point of a MMO is IF *I* ENJOY PLAYING IT. Nothing else matters.
P.s.: Err, nothing else matters to ME, of course. To everybody else, the only thing that matters is what THEY enjoy. Of course.
The easiest way to put it is that WoW can play on just about any computer that you can turn on. This allows the game to have a really high potential playerbase. Where other MMOs require you to have a super computer, this severely limits your potential playerbase. WoW does everything well, and has good controls and polish. If you press a button, there's no lag, and you're character doesn't look like he's some contortionist. Simply put, there's no reason to not play WoW. Other games that try to copy the WoW formula fall short, because "Why should I leave a game I've put 10 years of work into?"
Edit: You can make a hyper-realistic game, with a billion things going on all the time, but if it can only be played by 2 computers in the world, you're game will fail. People will try to play it on sub-par computers and it will play horribly. This is what happens to most modern MMOs. Unless you have something that beats the minimum requirements, not just meeting them, then you're probably not going to like the game. It will feel clunky and unpolished. There are some games I've played that are smooth, but many have called unpolished and clunky. Just like Windows 8, people complain about it's cpu and memory usage for an OS, but on my computer, I never run over 50% usage, with dual monitors, running 2 games, etc. The same goes for games.
since this is your initial argument, let me correct you on that one.
Ultima Online, Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Neocron, Lineage 2, Eve Online, Ragnarok Online, all came out before WoW and are actually still running. so whatever WoW did, it was NOT because they were the first.
there is ONE valid answer to why WoW is (according to you) still king of the hill, they have one of the best engines. their engine runs smooth and INSTANT. there are nearly 0 mouse lags or whatnot in combat, the combat system actually wasn't too creative (since it was used before), but it -plain and simple- perfected that system.
and to comment on your last stament of that paragraph... what is a WoW clone? WoW itself is an everquest or DAoC or whatever clone, shouldn't we refer to the original of the cloning here?
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"